Which Pokémon game first used a Game Boy Link Cable to let players trade Pokémon?

Pokémon Red and Green were the first Pokémon games to use the Game Boy Link Cable for trading Pokémon.

The original Japanese games made exchanging creatures a central part of the design. Two Game Boys could be connected with the cable, allowing players to trade species that were unavailable in the other game version and to battle one another.

This feature grew from Satoshi Tajiri’s idea that the Game Boy’s communication hardware could recreate the experience of collecting and exchanging living things. It became one of Pokémon’s defining innovations because completing the Pokédex was designed to require interaction between players.

The games are often called Pokémon Red and Blue because that was the international pairing. In Japan, the first releases were Red and Green; Blue arrived later as an updated version. Pokémon Yellow also supported trading, but it was not the first Pokémon title to introduce the mechanic.